St. Paul, in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, alludes to one of the appearances of our Lord after his resurrection, of which no mention is made in the Canonical Gospels: “After that, he was seen of James.”[216] But according to his account, this appearance took place after several other manifestations, viz. after that to Cephas, that to the Twelve, and that to five hundred brethren at once. But it preceded another appearance to “all the apostles.” If we take the first and second to have occurred on Easter-day, and the last to have been the appearance to them again “after eight days,” when St. Thomas was present, then the appearance to St. James must have taken place between the “even” of Easter-day and Low Sunday.
Now the Gospel of the Hebrews gives a particular account of this visit to James, which however, according to this account, took place early on Easter-day, certainly before Christ stood in the midst of the apostles in the upper room on Easter-evening.
St. Jerome says, “The Gospel according to the Hebrews relates that after the resurrection of the Saviour, ‘The Lord, after he had given the napkin to the servant of the priest, went to James, and appeared to him. Now James had sworn with an oath that he would not eat bread from that hour when he drank the cup of the Lord, till he should behold him rising from amidst them that sleep.’ And again, a little after, ‘The Lord said, Bring a table and bread.’ And then, ‘He took bread and blessed and brake, and gave it to James the Just, and said unto [pg 149]him, My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of Man is risen from among them that sleep.’ ”[217]
This touching incident is quite in keeping with what we know about St. James, the Lord's brother.
James the Just, according to Hegesippus, “neither drank wine nor fermented liquors, and abstained from animal food;”[218] and though the account of Hegesippus is manifestly fabulous in some of its details, still there is no reason to doubt that James belonged to the ascetic school among the Jews, as did the Baptist before him, and as did the orthodox Ebionites after him. The oath to abstain from food till a certain event was accomplished was not unusual.[219]
What is meant by “the Saviour giving the napkin to the servant of the priest,” it is impossible to conjecture without the context. The napkin was probably that which had covered his face in the tomb, but whether the context linked this on to the cycle of sacred sindones impressed with the portrait of the Saviour's suffering face, cannot be told. The designation of “the Just” as applied to James is for the purpose of distinguishing him from James the brother of John. He does not bear that name in the Canonical Gospels, but the title may have been introduced by St. Jerome to avoid confusion, or it may have been a marginal gloss to the text.
The story of this appearance found its way into the [pg 150] writings of St. Gregory of Tours,[220] who no doubt drew it from St. Jerome; and thence it passed into the Legenda Aurea of Jacques de Voragine.
If the Lord did appear to St. James on Easter-day, as related in this lost Gospel, then it may have been in the morning, and not after his appearance to the Twelve, or on his appearance in the evening he may have singled out and addressed James before all the others, as on that day week he addressed St. Thomas. In either case, St. Paul's version would be inaccurate as to the order of manifestations. The pseudo-Abdias, not in any way trustworthy, thus relates the circumstance:
“James the Less among the disciples was an object of special attachment to the Saviour, and he was inflamed with such zeal for his Master that he would take no meat when his Lord was crucified, and would only eat again when he should see Christ arisen from the dead; for he remembered that when Christ was alive he had given this precept to him and to his brethren. That is why he, with Mary Magdalene and Peter, was the first of all to whom Jesus Christ appeared, in order to confirm his disciples in the faith; and that he might not suffer him to fast any longer, a piece of an honeycomb having been offered him, he invited James to eat thereof.”[221]
Another fragment of the lost Gospel of the Hebrews also relates to the resurrection: